On Saturday we took a trip to Mandurah (a bustling city of 60,000, 80km south of Perth) to Abingdon Miniature Village where we met my parents and my grand-parents (I told you I was still a spring chicken!). It was inspired by the owner's visit in 1999 to Cockington Green in Canberra (Alice will have visited here) and they began construction in March 2000.

Most of the miniature models are exact replica's from some of England's more well-known areas and are hand made using a 1:10 scale.

It's not clear enough to see in this picture but nestled amongst this flowering groundcover is a little village set to appear as though it were built in a valley.

This lake has a model train running around the perimeter of it which does two circuits and then stops at the train station. It then waits a couple of minutes and for someone to walk across the bridge and trigger a sensor before it starts it's journey again.

As you can see, conifers are a big inclusion in this garden with more than 2,500 from over 100 varieties it is the largest conifer display in WA.

This maze was incredible and we almost lost a couple of kids in it. I usually baulk at these as being a little gimmicky but this one was quite hard to work out. They are currently developing a circular one in another part of the garden.